


That is How You Remind Me (i was waiting on a different story)

by thelaziesthufflepuff



Series: Happiness is not a House You Live In [1]
Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: Alternate Universe - A Song of Ice and Fire, Gen, also sanada has survivor's guilt, and akaya is doing his best to make him proud, in case you haven't figured it out, there is character death in this, very little happy things in this universe, yukimura is akaya's mom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-13
Updated: 2014-09-13
Packaged: 2018-02-17 06:42:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2300189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelaziesthufflepuff/pseuds/thelaziesthufflepuff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Akaya is the heir to the Stormlands, and his swordsmanship is still lacking. He is still lacking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That is How You Remind Me (i was waiting on a different story)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt by arysthaeniru on tumblr: Kirihara Akaya- Game of Thrones

“Left!  Up, slash, block! parry- and you’re dead,” his father notes grimly, pointing his practice sword straight at his heart. Akaya’s own practice sword sailed through the air clattered far behind him, narrowly missing the stables. He heard a whine from his pony and mentally apologized for scaring it. He would have stormed out of the practice yard (and he had, when he was younger and immature, quicker to rage and resort to blows, before everything), but unless he wants to end up cleaning stables till Midwinter he knows he better stay put.  

He clenched his fists, arm muscles trembling with exertion, sweat gently making its way down his brow and into his eyes.  His hands were wholly unable to hold on to his sword when his father struck a heavy blow on his arm with the flat edge of his sword, just like yesterday, and the day before, and the days that bled into weeks before that, and Akaya was tired of losing. He always lost. From the corner of his eyes he could see one of his father’s household, the one from Braavos, a land across the narrow seas, demanding coin from the cook. He’d been betting on him again then, notes Akaya grimly. He’d been betting on him to lose.     

“You need to get better Akaya. No son of mine will be a failure at swordsmanship.” Akaya bit his tongue, trapping his words. If he were a bigger glutton for punishment he would have said that Father had no room to talk, he was a good swordsman but Mother was better, Mother was always better, even when her limbs failed her, even when she could not get out of bed, even when she was buried deep underground, inlaid with jewels and gold, breathing the cold dust of the crypts.

He does not say these things, because Father knows it too, because Father blames himself for not being better, faster, more diplomatic, more forceful, for not being enough- for not doing everything he could do slow the spread of Mother’s disease, for not insisting she saw a Maester when she felt a chill in her limbs, for not trading his life and home and every good thing in his life if it meant she would live past winter, for everything and for nothing that relates to Mother.

He had blamed Father too, when he was younger, when he clutched his mother’s hand in his tinier ones ( _so, so, cold, he remembers_ ) and begged her to wake, he could remember screaming at his father in grief, only to stop when he saw that Father’s eyes were filled with tears, the first and only time he saw Father cry.

He grew up quickly after that.

 

("Ours is the Fury," he recalls reading that as a child, small enough to curl up in Mother's lap. He felt a wellspring of pride bubble inside him at the words, he would have Fury too, just like Father did. Father's fury could tear down the stones of the castle, sometimes Mother said even the heavens trembled at Father's fury. But she never did, even as a child Akaya knew how brave Mother was, how terrifying Mother was and how much Father loved her- with the force of the storms that their home was named after, stronger than the clap of thunder or a strike of lightning. He loved her like he loved the storms too, he heard Maester Renji say, with much respect and a healthy dose of fear, in constant awe of something greater than him. 

He remembers Mother brushing his hair out of his eyes, "remember to grow strong, Akaya. Fury is useless if you are weak.") 

 

He shakes these thoughts out of his head; they do him no good in the practice grounds.

“Again, I’ll beat you this time.”  He swears, and he imagines seeing approval in his father’s eyes.   

**Author's Note:**

> Leave Kudos or Comments if liked!


End file.
